Retroperitoneal Ectopic Pregnancy.

Background: Retroperitoneal ectopic pregnancies are rare and have a tendency to implant along major vessels of the abdomen and pelvis. Clinical manifestations can vary from no symptoms to hypovolemic shock and death.

Case: A 30-year-old woman presented in hypovolemic shock with left flank and abdominal pain after attempting to medically terminate her first-trimester pregnancy.

Meigs to modern times: The evolution of debulking surgery in advanced ovarian cancer.

Joe V. Meigs was a visionary clinician and an early adopter of radical techniques in the surgical treatment of ovarian cancer. His 1934 textbook "Tumors of the Female Pelvic Organs", consolidated his approach to this "hopeless" disease, with pearls on diagnosis, outcomes, and even speculations about the benefits of minimally invasive surgery.

Cancer and the world's poor: What's a gynecologic cancer specialist to do?

Women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face a drastically increased burden of cervical cancer and the same burden of other gynecologic cancers as do women in high-income countries, yet there are few resources or specialists to meet their needs. 85% of deaths from cervical cancer occur in LMICs. As the population of these regions age, and as death from infectious diseases decrease, this burden will increase further without strong intervention.

Induction of cytotoxic T lymphocytes against ovarian cancer-initiating cells.

The majority of patients with stage III/IV ovarian carcinoma that respond initially to standard therapies ultimately undergo relapse due to the survival of small populations of cells with tumor-initiating potential. These ovarian cancer (OVCA)-initiating cells (OCIC) are sometimes called cancer stem cells (CSC) because they express stem cell markers, and can survive conventional therapies such as chemotherapy, which usually target rapidly replicating tumor cells, and give rise to recurrent tumors that are more chemo-resistant and more aggressive. Thus, it would be desirable to develop a therapy that could selectively target OCIC and be used to complement the conventional therapies.

A heat shock protein 70-based vaccine with enhanced immunogenicity for clinical use.

In previous studies, we have shown that heat shock protein 70-peptide complexes (HSP70.PCs) derived from the fusion of dendritic cells (DCs) to tumor cells (HSP70.PC-F) possess superior properties compared with HSP70.

A case of bowel perforation after neoadjuvant chemotherapy for advanced epithelial ovarian cancer.

Background: Bowel perforation is a rare complication of chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer, and may result from tumor necrosis within involved bowel or as a function of the mechanism of the chemotherapeutic agent itself.

Case: We present a case of a 71-year-old woman who experienced a spontaneous bowel perforation after a single cycle of carboplatin and paclitaxel during neoadjuvant treatment of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer. This is, to our knowledge, the first reported case of a gastrointestinal perforation with neoadjuvant chemotherapy for ovarian cancer.

Assessment of fusion cells from patient-derived ovarian carcinoma cells and dendritic cells as a vaccine for clinical use.

Purpose: To evaluate a protocol that allowed the successful generation of DC and OVCA cells, fusion of these two cell types and assessment of stimulatory ability of the fusion cells for clinical use.

Patients And Methods: Ovarian cancer (OVCA) cells and dendritic cells (DC) were isolated or generated from 22 patients with OVCA and subsequently fused with PEG. The stimulatory ability of fusion cells including T cell proliferation and induction of cytotocic T lymphocytes (CTL) was assessed.

Dendritic cells fused with human cancer cells: morphology, antigen expression, and T cell stimulation.

Fusion of human dendritic cells (DC) with tumor cells is an effective approach for delivering tumor antigens to DC, and DC/tumor fusion cells are potent stimulators of autologous T cells. However, the integration and morphology of DC/tumor fusion cells has not been examined. In the present study, we fused patient-derived DC to autologous breast or ovarian carcinoma cells.

Spontaneous Renal Cell Carcinoma in a New Zealand White Rabbit.

The incidence of primary renal neoplasia in animals is quite low. Carcinomas are the most common primary renal tumors of dogs, cattle, and sheep. Among rabbit tumors, only uterine adenocarcinomas occur more frequently than do embryonal nephromas.